When conveying a patient from a care provider to an acute hospital, it is vital that an accurate picture of the patient's condition is documented, along with a detailed history of their medical status and current medications and allergies.

When speaking to a Health Care Professional (e.g. GP, or ambulance crew) about your resident or service user, it may be helpful to structure and prepare your handover using SBARD to ensure that all relevant information is passed.

 SBARD stands for:

• Situation
• Background
• Assessment
• Recommendations
• Decisions

Understandably, care homes can be reluctant to pass on patient files as these may be misplaced in transit and not returned to the home on discharge. In order to streamline the process and to assist in the management of patients following ambulance service engagement, the Trust has designed an example ambulance admission form. The form details the information that would be required should ambulance attendance and subsequent conveyance be necessary.

Medicines Management

Wasted medications cost the NHS in excess of £150million every year, poor compliance and missed opportunities to reconcile prescribed medications are thought to be key elements that require closer scrutiny. To this end it is vital that all patients' medications travel with them when they attend hospital.

Traditionally care homes and patients have been reluctant to provide medication; this not only increases the potential for waste, but also increases the potential for drug administration error. Often patients pharmacological management is adjusted both during hospital admission but also post discharge, medications previously prescribed may therefore have been stopped or dosages adjusted, it is therefore vital that all medications travel with the patient and are readily available upon ambulance service contact.

Following on from recent discussions with a range of care providers across the South West, we have compiled a list of frequently asked questions which that we hope you will find useful.